Lecture Courses:
INTRODUCTION TO BEHAVIOR: My teaching responsibilities at Cornell take many forms. Foremost are the courses that contribute to our Neurobiology and Behavior (NBB) undergraduate curriculum. Each fall semester, I participate in the large, team-taught "Introduction to Behavior" (BioNB 2210) course, one of two required survey courses for the NBB concentration of the Biology Major at Cornell. This course has a grand tradition at Cornell and remains popular with undergraduate biology majors. I usually present the "anchor leg" of lectures at the end of the course, zooming out to consider inter-specific interactions (mutualism, parasitism, deception, plant "behavior") and looping back to tie together important themes from across the semester. One active learning activity that I designed with Dr. Shelby Dietz is a challenge in which student groups are assigned one of three bird species (peacocks, pigeons, woodpeckers) and are asked to design either correlative or manipulative experiments to test the impacts of parasites on sexual display. Here, they are applying what they have learned about sexual selection and mating system evolution to parasitology through tests of the Zuk-Hamilton Hypothesis. Our students also make excellent use of the Cornell University Insect Collection (CUIC), which they visit to appreciate convergent evolution in warning coloration and camouflage across insect orders.
INTRODUCTION TO BEHAVIOR: My teaching responsibilities at Cornell take many forms. Foremost are the courses that contribute to our Neurobiology and Behavior (NBB) undergraduate curriculum. Each fall semester, I participate in the large, team-taught "Introduction to Behavior" (BioNB 2210) course, one of two required survey courses for the NBB concentration of the Biology Major at Cornell. This course has a grand tradition at Cornell and remains popular with undergraduate biology majors. I usually present the "anchor leg" of lectures at the end of the course, zooming out to consider inter-specific interactions (mutualism, parasitism, deception, plant "behavior") and looping back to tie together important themes from across the semester. One active learning activity that I designed with Dr. Shelby Dietz is a challenge in which student groups are assigned one of three bird species (peacocks, pigeons, woodpeckers) and are asked to design either correlative or manipulative experiments to test the impacts of parasites on sexual display. Here, they are applying what they have learned about sexual selection and mating system evolution to parasitology through tests of the Zuk-Hamilton Hypothesis. Our students also make excellent use of the Cornell University Insect Collection (CUIC), which they visit to appreciate convergent evolution in warning coloration and camouflage across insect orders.
CHEMICAL ECOLOGY: Each spring semester, I contribute to another team-taught course, "Chemical Ecology" (BioNB / EE / ENT 3690), which I teach with my interdepartmental colleagues, Andre Kessler (EEB), Jennifer Thaler (ENT) and Georg Jander (Plant Biology). This course was established by some of the founders of the field of Chemical Ecology, and I am honored to build on this tradition with my colleagues. My role in this course is to present foundational lectures on ecological chemistry and methods at the outset, then return to topics closer to my own research (plant-pollinator interactions, fruit and seed dispersal, mimicry and deception). In my module, we use "sniffing flights" of different chemicals to learn how functional groups affect perception and biological activity, and we challenge student groups to "evolve an orchid" by providing the traits needed for effective pollination and fruit dispersal in different assigned biomes (e.g. tropical islands vs. Himalayan forests).
Both of these courses have "Writing in the Majors" components and have been infused with Active Learning pedagogy.
Above, students lead group-discussions on the kind of orchid that would optimize reproductive fitness in the woodland bogs near Ithaca NY.
Both of these courses have "Writing in the Majors" components and have been infused with Active Learning pedagogy.
Above, students lead group-discussions on the kind of orchid that would optimize reproductive fitness in the woodland bogs near Ithaca NY.
PLANT BIOTIC INTERACTIONS AND BEHAVIOR: During even-year spring semesters, I teach another upper level course, "Plant Biotic Interactions and Behavior" (BioNB / EE / PLBIO 4460) with Andre Kessler (EEB). Andre and I designed this course when we were newly hired at Cornell, by applying Niko Tinbergen's "Four Why's" conceptual approach as a framework for thinking about adaptive physiology and phenotypic plasticity in plants. Our course has evolved through fusion (with Teresa Pawlowska's former course [BioMI 4480] on Symbiosis) and fission (loss of the 4461 lab) events and has become something of a capstone experience for graduating Plant Biology undergraduate majors. Our students visit the L.H. Bailey Conservatory to experience many charismatic plants covered in our course.
One highlight each winter is a field trip to Mundy Garden in the Cornell Botanic Garden, to observe thermogenesis in a local population of skunk cabbage, following my lectures on how flowers produce heat and how that benefits their reproductive success. We are always amazed to touch warm flowers during that snowy, blustery time!
[Left, Andre Kessler measuring the temperature within a newly opened spathe in February, 2022]
One highlight each winter is a field trip to Mundy Garden in the Cornell Botanic Garden, to observe thermogenesis in a local population of skunk cabbage, following my lectures on how flowers produce heat and how that benefits their reproductive success. We are always amazed to touch warm flowers during that snowy, blustery time!
[Left, Andre Kessler measuring the temperature within a newly opened spathe in February, 2022]